And now he knew he must not turn aside. The true path was ahead of him, into the narrowing valley.

Gravely he thanked the caviandis for their help. He had one last glimpse of their great dark shining eyes, gleaming at him from the tops of the rushes. Then the sleek little creatures sank down into that dense thicket of reeds and disappeared.

He returned to the wagon. He nudged the xlendi forward with a quick touch of second sight.

As the canyon narrowed, the stream that ran down its center grew swifter, grew wild and fierce, until by twilight it was sweeping along beside Hresh with a steady pounding roar. Looking ahead, he saw that the canyon was indeed open at the far end, but the opening was a mere slit through which the stream must be hurtling with cataract force.

Had the caviandis betrayed him? It seemed impossible. But how could he pass through that crack of an opening with his wagon?

He went onward, all the same.

Clearly now Hresh heard the thousand echoing and answering voices of the cataract. Overhead a great blue star had appeared in the sharp cool air and its reflection glittered in the stream. The path was so narrow now that there barely was room for the wagon beside the turbulent water. Here the ground trended slightly upward, which must mean that the bed of the stream cut ever deeper as it approached the opening ahead.

“Here he is at last,” said a dry voice that was like a whitening bone, a silent voice, a mind-voice. “The inquisitive one. The child of questions.”

Hresh looked up. Outlined against the deepening darkness of the sky was the angular figure of a hjjk, standing motionless and erect, holding in one of its many hands the shaft of a spear longer even than itself.

“Child?” Hresh said, and laughed. “A child, am I? No, friend. No. I’m an old man. A very weary old man. Touch my mind more carefully, if you doubt me, and you’ll see.”

“The child denies that he is a child,” said a second hjjk, appearing on the opposite side of the cliff that loomed above him. “But the child is a child all the same. Whatever he may think.”

“As you wish. I am a child.”

And indeed he was: for suddenly time fell inward on itself, and he was little wiry Hresh-full-of-questions again, scrambling hither and yon around the cocoon, plaguing everyone with his need to know, driving Koshmar and Torlyri to distraction, vexing his mother Minbain, irritating his playmates. All the weariness of the latter days dropped away from him. He was alive with his old furious energy and fearlessness, Hresh the chatterer, Hresh the seeker, Hresh the smallest and most eager for knowledge of all the tribe, who had hovered again and again by the hatch of the cocoon, dreaming of darting through one day into the unknown wonderful world that lay outside.

The hjjks began to descend the cliff, picking their way toward him over the jagged rock. He waited serenely for them, admiring the agility with which they moved and the way the light of the great blue star, which he realized now was only the Moon, glinted on their rigid, shining yellow-and-black shells. Five, six, seven of them came scrambling down. Not since his childhood had he seen a hjjk. He had thought them fearsome and ugly then; but now he saw the strange beauty of their lean, tapered forms.

The xlendi stood quite still, as if lost in xlendi dreams. One of the hjjks touched it lightly along its long jaw with a bristly forearm, and it turned at once and began to go forward. There was a dark cavern here, a mere crevice that Hresh had not noticed, which led through the heart of the cliff. Starlight was visible ahead. Hresh could hear the distant roar of the cataract as the xlendi plodded onward.

After a time they emerged onto a ledge on the cliff’s outer face. To Hresh’s right the stream, a milky torrent now, erupted through the crack in the rock and went plunging outward into space to land in a foaming basin far below. To his left a winding path led down the side of the cliff into a broad open prairie in which, in the darkness, nothing of consequence could be seen.

“The Queen has been expecting you,” a dry silent hjjk-voice said, as the wagon began its descent into that dark realm beyond.

9

To the Nest of Nests

All week long the messages had been coming to Salaman with rising urgency and intensity from the relay stations to the north and to the south.

Thu-Kimnibol was advancing at the head of a vast army from Dawinno. He was close to Yissou now, no more than a few days’ march away, perhaps less. Every relay agent along the road had underscored the awe he felt at the size of that oncoming force. Had Thu-Kimnibol brought everyone of fighting age in Dawinno with him? It almost seemed that way.

On the northern front the army of the king, four hundred strong, had pressed deeper and deeper day by day into the hjjk lands, following the route the little colony of Acknowledgers had taken.

We have found them,came the report finally. All dead.

And then:

We’ve been attacked by hjjks ourselves.

And then:

There are too many of them for us.

And then silence.

“Twice now the insect-folk have attacked our people without provocation,” Salaman told the people of Yissou, speaking from his pavilion atop the wall to a great horde of citizens in the plaza below. “They have slaughtered the innocent settlers whom Zechtior Lukin led into unoccupied territory. And now they have massacred the army we sent forth to rescue Zechtior Lukin’s people. There can be only one policy now.”

“War! War!” came the cry from a thousand throats.

“War, yes,” Salaman replied. “All-out war, by all the People against this implacable enemy. The hjjks have threatened the existence of this city since its earliest days: but now, with the help of our allies from Dawinno, we will bring the fire to their own domain, we will cut them to mincemeat, we will drag forth their loathsome Queen into the light of day and put an end at last to Her unspeakable life!”

“War! War!” came the cry again.

And later that afternoon, when Salaman had returned to the palace and had taken his seat upon the Throne of Harruel, his son Biterulve came to him and said, “Father, I want to go with the army when it sets out into the hjjk country. I ask your permission for this, as I must. But I beg you not to withhold it.”

Salaman felt a hand tightening about his heart. He had never expected anything like this.

“You?” he said, staring amazed at the pale slender boy. “What do you know of warfare, Biterulve?”

“I feared you’d say that. But you know I’ve been riding with my brothers in the lands outside the wall for a long time now. I’ve learned some skills of fighting from them as well. You mustn’t keep me from this war, father.”

“But the danger—”

“Would you make a woman of me, father? Worse than a woman, for I know that there’ll be women in our fighting brigades. Am I to stay home, then, with the old ones and children?”

“You’re no warrior, Biterulve.”

“I am.”

The boy’s quiet insistence carried a force Salaman had never heard from him before. He saw the anger in Biterulve’s eyes, the injured pride. And the king realized that his gentle scholarly son had put him in an impossible situation. Refuse permission and he robbed Biterulve forever of his princeliness. He’d never forgive him for that. Let him go, and he might well fall victim to some thrusting hjjk spear, which Salaman himself could scarcely bear to contemplate.

Impossible. Impossible.

He felt his anger rising. How dare the boy ask him to make a decision like this? But he held himself in check.

Biterulve waited, expectant, unafraid.

He gives me no choice, Salaman thought bitterly.

At length he said, sighing, “I never thought you’d have any appetite for fighting, boy. But I see I’ve misjudged you.” He looked away, and made a brusque gesture of dismissal. “All right. Go. Go, boy. Get yourself ready to march, if that’s what you need to do.”